The Long Way Home
by Damienne
Summary: Their relationship had a beginning, a middle, and an end, in no particular order. A Four-shot exploration or Nick and Greg's lives pre and post CSI. AUish, rated for later chapters.


Title: The Long Way Home

Chapter: 1 of 4

Rating: PG-13 for language and suggestive themes (higher rating to come)

Pairing: The Love eventually

Summary: Their relationship had a beginning, a middle, and an end, in no particular order.

Author's Note: This fic is split into four parts, in no particular order, pre and post canon. It will follow Nick and Greg at different points in their lives, from before they met to long after. I hope you like it!

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><p><em>I stumbled in the darkness,<em>

_ I'm lost and alone._

_ Though I said I'd go before us,_

_ To show the way back home._

1992 - San Francisco

The peace of water was cliché, but certainly not overrated. Harbor water was never as serene as pure ocean water, but the effect was basically the same, and so Greg Sanders, greatly in need of peace, took it in stride.

There was a grassy knoll right on the water in the touristy part of town, where honeymooning couples and cheerful families rode bikes and had wicker basket picnics. It was always crowded, even when the season was off or it was that awkward time of year where the charming San Francisco fog became just a little too eerie and uninviting. But the noise was helpful to Greg – it made him feel like he was escaping from something – and so the twenty-somethings sharing butterfly kisses and kids laughing over Wonderbread sandwiches were welcome.

He sat on the edge of the grass closest to the water with his legs crossed protectively over his chest and his arms wrapped around them. It was his thinking stance, but today it was more of his oblivious stance. He didn't need analysis, he needed quiescence. The world was sometimes too loud, even for a fifteen-year-old acne-ridden juvenile.

The things on his mind today were mixed – some common, some distinct. There was Nirvana and Radiohead and Ms. Wilson's tenth grade chemistry midterm. Matthew Schulman's party the following weekend – his parents were on a ski trip and his cousin was going to buy the Blue Ribbon – and the report on the Odyssey, which he still had yet to read, and Lisa McDonald's newest hook-up story. His driving test was a mere month away and he still hadn't found the perfect telescope to ask for for his sweet sixteenth and Jenna Albert was giving him weird looks again. All of this normalcy was taking a back seat today, though, because at the front of Greg's mind, practically screaming for attention, was Lee.

Lee Smith: the boring name of a boringly ubiquitous stereotype. Star basketball player (albeit in a private school of 500 students lauded for its SAT score average more than its free throw average), senior, rumored hands-down prom king and absolute teenage god in Greg's small and unworldly prep school. San Francisco Preparatory Academy's very own Jason Priestly, minus the sunglasses and addiction problems.

Lee was probably on the mind, not to mention the sexual fantasies, of many of the students at Greg's school. But Greg, much to his own disbelief, was pondering a rather unusual proposition. Like freshman year when Wayne Hart, class dumbass, had approached Greg after school and coerced him into writing a five page research paper for compensation of the monetary and less than rulebook form. A scrawny, frightened, and very, very broke Greg had agreed to the exchange, and as word spread quickly throughout the school, briefly maintained and entrepreneurial position as school go-to for all things cheating before his mother found out and nearly threatened his imminent death if he didn't shut it down. So he did.

But that was his only proposition experience, and this one was shaping up to be of quite a different variety. He was conflicted, his emotions split between excitement and terror and confusion, each portion battling for dominance. Of course, sitting on the grassy knoll listening to the hushed sounds of rippling water, what was at the forefront of Greg's mind was the shock that Lee Smith even knew his name.

"Greg, hey Greg Sanders! Wait up!" A voice from behind him bellowed. He stopped mid-stride, mostly just because he had reached his locker, and turned to see who was calling him.

"I've been looking for you all day," the six foot blonde haired, blue eyed Wrangler add said as if he and Greg were old time drinking buddies. He stopped by the lockers next to Greg, laying one hand causally on the cool metal and leaning into it like a James Dean bronze sculpture.

Greg stood frozen in front of his locker, eyes locked on a boy he didn't think he'd ever been within thirty yards of, and he swallowed hard. Pulled out of his trance, shaky hands found the combination on his locker and Greg made every effort to hide behind the sage green metal and pretend like no one was there.

"Yo, kid," Blue eyes continued unharmed, jerking a quick nod and an abnormally white grin at a brunette on her way to her next class. "I was thinkin' you and I could chat sometime."

A squashed squeal escaped Greg's mouth that was supposed to sound something like, "Sorry, why are you talking to me?" but came out as more of an impersonated cat noise, so he just let his cheeks flush bright crimson as he made every continued attempt to melt into the aluminum of his locker.

"Cool," Blue eyes continued, obviously taking Greg's squeak as a positive sign. "Meet me outside by the tennis courts after sixth period. Kay?"

And Greg would have explained that he really wasn't supposed to meet strange men in isolated places, but blue eyes was gone before the words could come out.

Greg was practically frozen to his locker, afraid that if he moved even an inch blue eyes would come back and insist they go on spring break together. So he waited for the bell to ring again and the buzz of students late for class to fill the halls and he faded back into everyone else like water into vinegar.

Curious and even flattered, whilst a little leery, Greg did walk to the spot behind the tennis courts where rebellious students smoked weed during gym and flings had quick, messy sex under the shady trees, and he waited for…whatever it was he was waiting for, kicking at the autumnal mix of dead leaves and fallen twigs beneath his sneakers.

"You showed," Blue eyes announced from a few feet away from Greg. Greg jumped at the sudden intrusion to his wandering imagination and gave the boy a small, unsure smile.

"I knew you would. I mean, I thought you would." Blue eyes joined Greg's ritual of finding the crunchiest leaves on the ground to step on and spoke softly, less confidently than before. "I hoped you would."

Greg looked up, but only briefly, as the boys made eye contact and simultaneously darted their eyes back to the ground. Neither spoke for a long, unusually serene moment, until blue eyes finally cleared his throat and ran a large hand through sandy, well groomed hair.

"Sorry, my name's–"

"Lee Smith, I know," Greg said, voice stronger than he expected it to be.

Lee didn't look surprised, inevitably used to the idol worship and instead just nodded confirmatively. Greg wanted to ask how Lee knew his name, but refrained.

"'ve seen you around," Lee continued casually.

Greg could have returned the sentiment, but judging by Lee's cavalierity about his top status at the school guessed he already knew that.

"You had Wilkes for American History, right?" Lee asked in an obviously unfamiliarly desperate struggle to make conversation.

Greg just nodded and continued staring at the ground. He wanted to ask why he had to stay after sixth period to meet someone he'd never spoken to before, but his curiosity about where this was going was beating his curiosity about the obscurity of the situation.

"Thersa party this weekend," Lee blurted out uncoordinatedly. "Up in San Jose. And you could come, i-if ya wanted to."

Greg looked up, his bewilderment finally beating his newfound fascination with leaves, and he managed a small "umm" before Lee cut him off.

"Uhmean you don't have to, if you don't want to, I was just thinking we could…" Lee made the type of gesture with his hand that suggests the opposite member of the conversation should know what was going to be said next. But Greg, eyebrows now knit in a bland look of confusion, had no idea.

Lee seemed to give up, surrendering to probably months of practice in front of a mirror and silent pep talks preparing for exactly this moment, and so he hung his head and let out a low, stored gust of air before blurting out ungracefully, "Do you want to fuck me, Greg?"

Greg froze in a stoic, nonthreatened way, the deep of his subconscious railing that this probably wasn't normal and ignoring it anyway. All Greg could think to do was shrug and deadpan a soft "maybe".

Lee, struck by the unanticipated ease of Greg's reaction, took a startled step backwards and chocked out an "Oh."

"Well, erm," Lee continued, "I guess just let me know…tomorrow er somethin'." He backed away slowly from Greg, a look of mounting confusion plastered on his boyish face, and then as unexpectedly as he'd come, he was gone.

Greg stood in the same position for several more moments, pondering unapocalyptically what the hell had just happened before he ultimately decided his current position behind the tennis courts was not the best place to think about this new proposition. He gathered his thoughts, took one last stomp on a leave that looked particularly tempting, and headed towards the bus stop, harbor-bound.

And so there he sat, pondering Lee's proposition, wondering if he was still in a pot and sleep-deprived induced stupor from the previous weekend and had in fact imagined the whole thing. But, although Lee Smith had inevitably made it into his fantasies before, they never consisted of that type of random, awkward, bumbling proposal, and so he decided once and for all that it was real – Lee Smith wanted to sleep with Greg Sanders, a fifteen-year-old, heavy-metal-listening, Acutane-taking virgin.

He didn't know how to respond. He didn't know what to think or feel or how to act. What did he say to Lee if he _did_ decide to take him up on his offer? And what would Lee say to everyone else? And the most pressing question – How did he even know Greg was gay?

Subtlety, no matter how lauded in the music he listened to or the independent poetry readings he sometimes attended on weekends, was certainly not Greg's forte. But even so, when it came to the complex and personal world of his sexuality, Greg wasn't loud. He wasn't boisterous. He wasn't even really _out_.

Your average San Francisco youth, gay, straight, and everything in between, was out about everything. From school to sex to drugs, it was okay to talk. And parents, excluding the uptight my-child-is-the-next-big-thing type parents, had little choice but to be okay with all of that. And Greg's parents, liberal and California raised, were no exception.

He didn't tell them he was gay; they told him. In an unusual and surprisingly only slightly awkward conversation, his parents had sat him down a few years prior and simply explained to him that whatever feelings he might have – emotional, physical, sexual – were completely normal, and he shouldn't be fooled by the suggestions of some that there might be something wrong with him; that he might be sick or confused or simply _wrong_. And so that had been that and Greg had nodded and silently taken note that his parents were okay with him. All of him. But there'd been no further discussion since. With anyone.

But then there was Lee, so certain. Nervous, sure, but not about the fact that Greg was not actually interested in sleeping with him. And that bothered Greg, mostly because he just liked to know what was going on. And so he agreed to, erm, "attend a party" with Lee because, hey, he had to at least find out how he knew, right?

But talking wasn't much on Lee Smith's mind and, as he scooted closer to Greg in the front seat of his 89' Volvo, neither was Greg. The well-bodied boy's intoxicating scent of Aqua Velva and musk, his hands clenched surely, if a little harshly, on the leather steering wheel, the way he kept sneaking glances at Greg when he thought Greg wasn't looking. Greg felt wanted, he felt scandalous, he felt…horny.

Awarely clueless, and similarly too lost in the fantasy of the whole thing to care, Greg's hand slid of its own accord onto Lee's lap, onto his knee and then his thigh and then the increasing lump tinting the front of his pants. And Greg had no idea what he was doing, but Lee certainly didn't seem to mind, so he took a shaky breathe, unsteadily unzipped the older boy's pants, and brought chapped lips to his quickly hardening member.

Walking through school hallways and into classrooms and down the cafeteria line, he just felt different. He felt so very adult, so worldly, like he knew a secret no one else at the school knew – except Lee Smith of course. There was strength in this newfound feeling, power and seniority and a false sense of superiority. And for a while, a few months even, Greg was happy on this cloud of defloweration.

And then Billy Stone approached him, and Michael Crosby and Liam Carpenter and Sam Campbell and Alexander Reynolds, and Greg quickly realized something: He was everyone's dirty little secret. He was Mary Magdalene to every closet-case in the school, and he was surprised at how many people that turned out to be. Class clowns and theater geeks and tennis players and Ivy League-bound SAT-preppers alike would corner him in the bathroom or ask him to accompany them to the field behind the tennis courts or, even sometimes, just come up behind him in the small and sparsely outfitted gym lockers and grab him through his jock strap.

At first, he was okay with it. Or, he _thought_ he was okay with it at least. It added fodder to his scandalous, superior high and made him feel like he was nothing less than everyone's favorite kind-of-openly-gay sex god. And then the looks from everyone – girl, boy, teacher alike – seemed to change. Looks of admiration or kindness or even complete anonymity faded into ones of disgust or disdain or condescending disappointment.

After a while, Greg didn't feel scandalous and superior anymore. He just felt like your average Vegas-based prostitute. And maybe that was the way it was supposed to be as a young, semi-closeted homosexual in a twisted world, but he wasn't sure that he was okay with that. Yet, he didn't have the willpower nor the knowledge or confidence or even the full-bodied desire to _stop_, and so he didn't. Everyone, from the jocks to the nerds to the nobodies to the somebodies, became Greg's secret sexual experimentation fan base.

Lee Smith left for some sort of pre-college soul searching expedition come June and Greg didn't see or hear from him again. But after Lee Smith, there was always someone else. Someone popular and athletic and boyishly handsome. Someone with a secret they expected Greg to keep not out of trust but rather confidence in the social structure of a high school totem pole where Greg was at the bottom.

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><p>1990 - Dallas Suburbs<p>

Seventeen-year-old Nick Stokes was at the top. Popular and athletic and boyishly handsome, there wasn't a soul in his public high school of over two thousand that didn't know who his name. Girls wanted him, boys wanted to _be_ him, and he was perfectly content with all of the above.

Most of the time he felt like a God; Nicholas Stokes, the Patron Saint of Popularity. As he passed in the halls, girls swooned and turned their heads and let out foolish, dainty little giggles. He'd occasionally stop to high-five one of his pseudo-buddies, but mostly he just walked straight down the middle, poised in a numbered Letterman jacket – because after all, he was the star quarterback – with his posse of defensive ends behind him.

He was king over the superficial rulings of an upper class subdivision high school. Popular and athletic and boyishly handsome.

It wasn't quite hazing, it was more of a recreational activity. Or at least, that's what they told themselves. The new recruits to varsity football really didn't have a choice but participate, lest they be teased mercilessly for the remainder of their high school careers, but they could opt out. However, John (last name never bothered to be learned) couldn't opt out. Five foot seven, one hundred and twenty five pounds, and not-so-affectionately labeled the "school queer", John didn't have much choice in the matter at all.

Nick felt like a 1960s era Greaser, sitting on the bench seats in the front of Jeff Cooper's 1988 Chevy. Five newly recruited adolescents joked loudly and told stories of wild weekend parties complete with obscene gesticulations. John would be waiting around the corner having just left the library – Eight fifteen sharp – and palpable excitement pulsed through the truck.

Nick didn't feel excitement though, not anymore. Leading quarterback and team captain had no choice but to participate, but the memories of the bloodied clothes he'd hand washed after his own initiation crept into his unwilling mind like water from loose tea.

"There," he said lifelessly, half-heartedly pointing to the fragile boy with books hugged protectively close to his chest.

The excited energy increased as the truck slowed to an almost-stop and the five adolescents piled from their cramped conditions in the backseat of the car. Jeff Cooper subtly drove away from the five boys slowly approaching an already timid John, and almost malicious laughter came from the two boys on either side of Nick.

Nick didn't laugh. When the two senior football players in the car with him – Nick's peers – flaccidly announced that "faggot boy" would "get off easy with those sissies", Nick didn't laugh. When the five boys ran back into the car like they were escaping the scene of a bank robbery – clothes surely bloodied though Nick dared not to look – and began excitedly recounting their tale, Nick didn't laugh. When they took turns coming up with ways to give "King Queer" more interesting bruises, Nick didn't laugh.

He left early, walked home, and made an anonymous call to 911 requesting an ambulance to an alley near the library – "and better hurry" – he didn't laugh.

"It matches your eyes," Nick said with practiced precision as he secured the green corsage around Emily Summer's thin, pale arm. She tucked a loose strand of thin blonde hair behind her small ears and smiled flirtatiously at the compliment.

Fifteen minutes for pictures, half an hour in a rented limousine, and three quarters of a bottle of Jack Daniel's later, and Nick had his hands resting firmly on her trim back as Sinead O'Connor assured them that "Nothing Compares to You".

It still didn't feel right. Nick had tried – he'd spent a solid six years of his life trying – and it still didn't feel right. Emily wrapped her hands possessively around the back of his neck, and then down the front of his bleached and pressed white tuxedo shirt, and then further still, stopping with one hand at his belly and another snaking in between his legs.

"A drink, you—I'll get you one," Nick stuttered, dropping his hands from the back of her dress immediately as he stumbled off the makeshift dance floor and fished secretively in his tuxedo pocket for the flask of an off-brand tequila he'd stored there earlier. He drank, the bitter taste stinging the back of his throat, and wished – prayed – for normalcy.

Nick _would_ eventually end up in the backseat of the limousine at the end of the night, inebriated but hiding it well, with Emily draped over him and moaning for "more" and "harder". And he did, because it was what was expected of him. But Emily, while fit and dainty with a well-proportioned face and droves of long blonde hair, was distant from his mind. She wasn't what he wanted. He didn't _know _what he wanted.

_The right girl,_ Nick would tell himself repeatedly. _That's all I need – I just haven't met the right girl_.

And it would be years before he finally stopped believing it.


End file.
